Spring Boot + Maven – Hello World Example Step by Step

In this article, I am going to explain the steps to create a Spring Boot hello world application using Spring Tool Suite(STS) and Maven. Friends follow this article carefully, as this is the first spring boot application I am going to explain each and every step with screenshot, from the next tutorial on words, I will directly start with directory structure.

1. Open STS (Spring Tool Suite) > File > New > Maven Project

2. Tick ‘Create a simple project (skip archetype selection)‘ check box > click Next

3. Provide Group Id (its your package), Artifact Id (project name) and click Finish

4. Now you will see a Maven project in your work space, something like..

Note: If you observe, its showing ‘JRE System Library [J2SE-1.5]’ as default java version, lets keep it a side for now.

5. So, Maven project is created with default setup, lets add Spring Boot related stuff in the pom.xml ( Guys, hope you have a basic idea about Maven, in pom.xml we will include all dependencies ), open pom.xml

By default pom.xml contains

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.java4s</groupId>
  <artifactId>SpringBootHelloWorld</artifactId>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>  
</project>

Lets add Spring Boot related stuff in it

pom.xml

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.java4s</groupId>
  <artifactId>SpringBootHelloWorld</artifactId>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
  
  	<parent>
	    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
	    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
	    <version>1.5.6.RELEASE</version>
	 </parent>
	
	<dependencies>
	    <dependency>
	        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
	        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
	    </dependency>
	</dependencies>
	
	<properties>
	 <java.version>1.8</java.version>
	</properties>  
  
</project>

Explanation

• I have added spring-boot-starter-parent, spring-boot-starter-web and I want to show Spring Boot tutorials in Java 8, so I have added java version at line number 21
• What is spring-boot-starter-parent? actually this is an existing project given by spring team which contains Spring Boot supporting configuration data (remember just configuration data, it wont download any jars), we have added this in a <parent> tag means, we are instructing Maven to consider our SpringBootHelloWorld project as a child to it, wait for a second, I will show you practically why we have to add spring-boot-starter-parent as parent  🙂
• In the dependencies, I have added spring-boot-starter-web for web module

6. Now right click on the application > Maven > Update Project, If you now observe the directory structure of the project, it will create a new folder named “Maven Dependencies” which contains all supporting .jars to run the Spring Boot application and the Java version also changed to 1.8

Note: Did you observe lines 13-18 of pom.xml? I haven’t included version number for spring-boot-starter-web 🙂 but maven downloaded some jar files with some version(s) related to spring-boot-starter-web, how its possible? that’s because of Maven’s parent child relation. While adding spring boot parent project, I have included version as 1.5.6.RELEASE, so again we no need to add version numbers for the dependencies.  As I told you earlier, spring-boot-starter-parent contains configuration meta data, this means, it knows which version of dependency need to be downloaded.  So we no need to worry about dependencies versions., which will save lot of our time 😉

7.  Now create a java class in src/main/java > I have created one with name SpringBootApp.java in com.java4s.app package. I mean the final directory structure looks like…

Note: put your java class in some package, it is mandatory.*  If you haven’t created a package it gives the following error while running your Spring Boot application.

Your ApplicationContext is unlikely to start due to a @ComponentScan of the default package.

SpringBootApp.java

package com.java4s.app;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

@SpringBootApplication
public class SpringBootApp 
{
     public static void main(String[] args) 
     {
         SpringApplication.run(SpringBootApp.class, args);
     }
}

Explanation

• In line number 6, I have added @SpringBootApplication annotation, means this is the starting point for our Spring Boot application
• In line number 11, I am bootstrapping the application

For now just remember, for every spring boot application we have to create a main class and that need to be annotate with @SpringBootApplication and bootstrap it 🙂

8. Finally, right click on the application > Run As > Java Application

9. Select our java class > ok

10. Open console and check the output

You can check the above output, its saying Started SpringBootApp on 8080, in sometime. That’s it, we have successfully executed a spring boot application 🙂

You Might Also Like

• Spring Boot Configure DataSource Using JNDI with Example
• How to Configure Cache in Spring Boot Applications
• Spring Boot – Display All Beans Available in ApplicationContext
• Spring Boot – RESTful Web Service with POST Request in XML Example
• Spring Boot – RESTful Web Service with POST Request in JSON Example

::. About the Author .::
		Sivateja Kandula - Java/J2EE Full Stack Developer Founder of Java4s - Get It Yourself, A popular Java/J2EE Programming Blog, Love Java and UI frameworks. You can sign-up for the Email Newsletter for your daily dose of Java tutorials.